Summary

After her idealist father gets swept away with Soviet propaganda about a socialist Eden, young Vilma gets packed off to Kyrgyzstan along with her family. Instead of finding paradise, however, they discover only totalitarian oppression and political murder. One by one, her family is killed for trumped-up charges as a part of Stalin's purges. Later, Vilma is taken to a Young Soviet school, given the more revolutionary name Nina Alexeyevna, and eventually allowed to return to her native Hungary.